Lost in Suburbia: This will curl your hair

Wednesday

Feb 21, 2018 at 9:08 AMFeb 21, 2018 at 9:08 AM

Tracy Beckerman More Content Now

When I first heard that they had made curling an Olympic sport, I was a little surprised.

How is curling your hair a competitive sport? It doesn’t take all that much effort to lift and twist a curling iron ... I know, I did it for years before I cut my hair. I was actually pretty good at it. Not exactly gold-medal material, but maybe bronze.

I thought it might kind of make sense considering that they had now decided to add chess and bridge to the Olympic Games in 2020, because heaven knows, those chess pieces and playing cards can get pretty heavy.

Then I watched an actual curling competition on TV and realized it had nothing to do with hair.

Supposedly, curling is in the same family as games like shuffleboard. I remember playing shuffleboard at my grandparent’s retirement community down in Florida when I was little. My 80-year-old grandfather swept the shuffleboard floor with me more than a few times. My grandfather also wore his pants under his armpits and ate dinner at 4:30 p.m. You can see how all these factors together might not bode well for my opinion of curling.

As I was watching, I realized I really had no idea what they were doing. The competition might had made more sense to me if it had been about hair because I had no clue what sweeping with a broom and a Roomba had to do with sports. Of course, I know I’ve worked up quite a bit of a sweat when I’ve been cleaning up my house, especially when my kids are home on break. Now there’s a sport where I could take home a silver.

I actually wished it was about cleaning or curling your hair because I think those competitions might be more interesting than curling. I know a lot of people really love the sport, and I don’t want to offend anyone who is a fan, but I find the whole thing insanely boring and honestly, not all that athletic. It must be harder than I think, though, because one of the Russian athletes just got disqualified for doping. That didn’t make sense to me, either, unless he had been taking steroids to keep himself awake while he curled.

Now, apparently, curling has gotten so popular that one of the Olympic curling teams has released a calendar with pics of their curling competitors. I didn’t think it could quite hold a candle to, say, those firemen calendars. And honestly, based on what I’d seen, I was as interested in seeing the curling pics as I would be of seeing a calendar of the manly men of chess.

But then I saw yet another news story about the calendar and decided to check the pictures out myself. Surprisingly, these guys were not un-hot. They were, actually, quite buff, and definitely rated right up there with shirtless fireman holding puppies.

I suddenly had a newfound respect for curling.

And I also, suddenly, understood why so many women were into watching the sport.— For more Lost in Suburbia, follow Tracy on Facebook at facebook.com/LostinSuburbiaFanPage or on Twitter at @TracyBeckerman.

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